Nemotron Ultra 253B vs LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Nemotron Ultra 253B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 48 to 30. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Nemotron Ultra 253B's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 33.7 against 7.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Pro, 38 to 6. LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct does hit back in instruction following, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Nemotron Ultra 253B is the reasoning model in the pair, while LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use.

Quick Verdict

Pick Nemotron Ultra 253B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct only becomes the better choice if instruction following is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

46.7

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

25.7

46
Terminal-Bench 2.0
22
50
BrowseComp
31
45
OSWorld-Verified
26

Coding

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

33.7

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

7.2

41
HumanEval
14
31
SWE-bench Verified
9
30
LiveCodeBench
8
38
SWE-bench Pro
6

Multimodal & Grounded

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

44.7

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

32.4

37
MMMU-Pro
27
54
OfficeQA Pro
39

Reasoning

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

53.3

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

32.1

47
SimpleQA
24
45
MuSR
22
77
BBH
59
55
LongBench v2
34
56
MRCRv2
37

Knowledge

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

42.4

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

26

49
MMLU
26
48
GPQA
25
46
SuperGPQA
23
44
OpenBookQA
21
63
MMLU-Pro
50
11
HLE
1
49
FrontierScience
30

Instruction Following

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

Nemotron Ultra 253B

78

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

80

78
IFEval
80

Multilingual

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

70.1

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

60.7

74
MGSM
62
68
MMLU-ProX
60

Mathematics

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

59.7

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

37

49
AIME 2023
24
51
AIME 2024
26
50
AIME 2025
25
45
HMMT Feb 2023
20
47
HMMT Feb 2024
22
46
HMMT Feb 2025
21
48
BRUMO 2025
23
74
MATH-500
54

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Nemotron Ultra 253B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Nemotron Ultra 253B is ahead overall, 48 to 30. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Pro, where the scores are 38 and 6.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Nemotron Ultra 253B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 42.4 versus 26. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Nemotron Ultra 253B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 33.7 versus 7.2. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Nemotron Ultra 253B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 59.7 versus 37. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Nemotron Ultra 253B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 53.3 versus 32.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Nemotron Ultra 253B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 46.7 versus 25.7. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Nemotron Ultra 253B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 44.7 versus 32.4. Inside this category, OfficeQA Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Nemotron Ultra 253B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 80 versus 78. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Nemotron Ultra 253B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.1 versus 60.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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